When drafting the specification for the goods or services required, the specification describes what it is that you wish to purchase. The separate elements of the specification form the basis of the tender submission and of the assessment process carried out by the project team. It is important, therefore, that these elements can be objectively assessed so that when carrying out the evaluation process, it can be completed in a fair and open manner. There are specific legislative requirements regarding the use of the initial selection criteria and then when evaluating the bid submissions against the published award criteria. Both the selection and award criteria must be published in, where appropriate the advertised contract notice, and in the quotation/tender documentation.
Thus, when determining the questions to ask in, for example, the pre-qualification questionnaire or the tender documentation, ask yourself ‘How will I assess the information received from the tenderers'’ For example, if asking for the CVs of staff who will provide a service, consider asking for examples of three or five relevant projects rather than a whole CV, this will save you having to try and identify relevant work from within the person’s work experience and will also give the respondent the opportunity to be selective in promoting what it thinks are major achievements by its staff.
Sometimes when drafting criteria, there will be those that are essential (sometimes termed critical or mandatory) and must be met, otherwise the submission will be excluded without further consideration. Any essential criteria should be clearly marked and assessed. Other important, but not critical, criteria are termed desirable however failure to meet one of these will not automatically result in the submission failing. Within the Whole Life Costing model, essential criteria should be allocated a relatively high weighting in comparison to the non-essential ones. This will then have the impact of reducing the overall score allocated to a submission that does not meet an essential criterion.
For information on the practical aspects of evaluating tenders please click here and to view a sample scoring system, click here.
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